Registered Permanent Residence System which is the Root for All

Household registration status impacts immensely on individual acquisition of educa- tion: people from farming (rural) households have much smaller educational opportu- nity than those from nonfarming or urban households. In the first 30 years, because the government undertook popularization of education in the countryside and at the same time consciously provided opportunities for rural people to enter secondary and tertiary schools, the impact of household registration status on individual educational attain- ment tended to decline. Through the 1980s and 90s, urban-rural disparities, including those in educational resources, tended to increase, leading to the gradual intensification of the impact of household registration status.

A rural-urban gap and a desire to leave the countryside behind are common in most developing countries. What is uncommon is that China has been able to contain this de- sire for migration with institutional arrangement for decades. Ever since the registered permanent residence (hukou) system was firstly implemented nationally, the urban-rural divide has been the single most important factor that structures virtually all aspects of life chances in China (Cheng and Selden 1994; Knght and Song 1999; Wu and Treiman 2004).

In the mid-1950s, rural land reform, collectivization, and then communization, plus a continuing gap between rural and urban living standards drove a large-scale peasant migration to the cities. The government soon became concerned about the disorder and extra expenses this movement might create, since it threatened to undermine the government’s program of full urban employment and drive up the state’s expenditure on housing, schools, parks and other social needs just when it was trying to increase investment in industry. The government thought it was necessary to limit the migration of rural population to urban areas, in order to promote the capital-intensive industri- alization, which stressed the heavy industry at a relatively low social cast. Aiming at population registration and control, by the National People’s Congress in 1958 the government passed strict hukou legislation whose effect was formally to differentiate res- idential groups as a means to control population movement and mobility and to shape state developmental priorities. Henceforth, China’s hukou system has long been, and remains today, the central institutionalized mechanism defining the city-countryside re- lationship and shaping important elements of state-society relations in China.

This system institutionalized the social division of labor in which rural and urban resi- dents were destined to be either “agricultural” or “non-agricultural” population. For a newborn baby, hukou status is inherited from the maternal line. The key to regulating formal rural-to-urban migration under the hukou system is to control the hukou status converting process from agricultural to non-agricultural, which is subject to simulta- neous “policy” and “quota” controls. The former defines the qualifications of people’s entitlement to non-agricultural hukou, whereas the latter regulates the number of qual- ified people who get non-agricultural hukou.

A citizen who wants to move from the countryside to a city must posses an employment certifi- cate issued by the city labor bureau, a certificate of admission issued by a school, or a moving

certificate issued by the household registration office of the city of destination, and must apply to the household registration office in his or her permanent place of residence for permission to move out and fulfill the moving procedure.25

By late 1970s, the regulation was strictly enforced, and mobility between the two sta- tus groups was extremely difficult under the restriction of the registered residence dual status system unless they had been specifically recruited to do. Urban economic en- terprises had strict limits placed on their wage fund, and were forbidden to hire extra regular staff members without special permission. Even marriage to an urbanite did not entitle anyone to move into the cities in order to live with one’s spouse. The most regular channels of “agricultural to non-agricultural hukou conversion process” are re- cruitment by an urban enterprise, enrolment in an institute of higher education, joining the army, or promotion to a senior administrative position. The policies of recruitment, enrollment and promotion are made by labor, education and personnel authorities, and the conversion quotas associated with these policies was formerly set by the State Plan- ning Commission in planning economy period, and then mostly by local government in reform era.

The townspeople were born with the right to live and work in urban areas, and the social welfare only covered urban residents. The gaps between the two groups in eco- nomic interests and opportunities that were endowed by institutions were huge. What the townspeople enjoyed greatly surpassed that which the peasants possessed.

Unlike population registration systems in many other countries, the Chinese household permanent registration (hukou) system was designed not merely to provide population statistics and identify personal status, but also directly to regulate population distribu- tion and serve many other important objectives desired by the state. Since the hukou system links people’s accessibility to state-provided benefits and opportunities, it sig- nificantly affects personal life in many aspects, including educational and occupational attainment, and social mobility. Its power in controlling people’s lives has declined in the reform ear in the wake of enormous social and economic changes and increase in rural-to-urban mobility, but at some level it determines people’s fates still, especially for Chinese rural residents. In contemporary China, the hukou system still prioritizes the city over the countryside, by controlling population movement up and down the spatially defined status hierarchy26_{, preventing population flow to the big cities, and}

binding people to the village or city of their birth.

In reform era, especially since 1990s, as population movement from countryside to the

25_{“Regulations Governing Household Registration,” (Peking: Standing Committee, National People’s}

Congress, 9 January 1958), translated in H. Yuan Tien, China’s Population Struggle (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1973), p. 113.

26

A rigid hierarchy created by hukou system: At the bottom are peasants, classified as members of “agricultural households” who are generally unable to move into urban places to establish residence. Next come those in nonagricultural households living in rural towns, then those in county towns, district cities, provincial capital, and finally in the national level cities like Beijing and Shanghai. One can move down this hierarchy relatively easily, and parallel (to another urban place at the same administrative level) with some difficulty, but movement up, to a large urban place, is extremely difficult to arrange (Whyte and Parish, 1984).

cities accelerated, a more flexible hukou policy has been adopted, but the basic func- tion and features of it are intact, and the classification of citizens are agricultural or non-agricultural based on the hukou registration still exists. Persons holding different hukou still have different political and economic rights and obligations. Transfer of hukou status from agricultural to non-agricultural in nowadays is still subject to policy and quota controls. The reason for that persistence might be Chinese national leaders fear the congestion, social unrest and less of political control which might accompany an increasingly mobile labor force. Therefore, the dual hukou system, which underwent some drastic changes n the past decades, has not lost its importance in Chinese cities. Despite large income difference between rural and urban households, the rapid urban permanent migration found in many industrializing countries has been limited in China. For over three decades, the hukou system has made it possible to bind China’s rural population in a subaltern position on land which it did not own and could not leave.

In contemporary China, it is still very hard for people with “agricultural hukou” to find stable jobs in cities even if they have lived there for years. They are always labeled as underclass and receive lower salaries, fewer state-subsidized benefits, and even less civil rights than legal urban residents. They could only take up marginal jobs that are comparatively characterized by long hours, poor working conditions, low and unstable pay, and much less benefits in housing, food provided at the workplace, childcare, trans- portation, and entertainment — jobs which are unattractive to urban residents. What really distinguishes the Chinese disparity between rural migrants and urban employees is not the wage difference, but the difference in state-subsidized benefits. Urban em- ployees receive welfare benefits associated with their employment, whereas only about 10 percent of rural migrants report having any kind of medical insurance coverage and less than 5 percent have retirement pension benefits, the figures for urban employees are two-thirds and 80 percent (Wang and Zuo, 1999). Furthermore rural migrants tend to live in smaller house compared with their urban counterparts and it is harder for them to find a spouse in cities or bring their families to join them if they are married. Ad- ditionally, rural migrants are socially separated from local urban residents. Often, they themselves, spouses, and children are looked down by urbanites and local government as second-level citizens. The stereotype of rural migrants is that they are uneducated, ignorant, dirty, and have high probability to do crimes.

In the past two decades, many local governments have allowed the issue of special res- idence permits to encourage peasants to reside in small cities and towns, in order to achieve the local urbanization target. Some medium-sized cities have also loosed their restrictions. But in more desirable places such as large cities, hukou is under stricter control and open sale is generally not allowed. Under a few circumstances where the permanent urban residence status would become possible for rural population to ob- tain, but the requirement and the price are exorbitantly high. Beijing simplifies the application process of technical employees with senior professional titles to move there. Other big cities like Shanghai, Shenzhen and Zhuhai have regulations that allow any- one who buys local commercial property at a price higher than certain level to apply for permanent hukou after paying administrative fees which are also very expensive for most citizens.

Without registration, one still is not able to apply for schooling, get married, or enlist in the army. In contemporary China, urban residents are still taken as the state’s direct responsibility and they are confined to cities and towns with fixed and legal education, housing, employment, food, water, sewage disposal, transportation, medical facilities, police protection, and also retirement subsidy and endowment insurance. The state budget must supply urban area with all those essentials and amenities of life (Banister, 1987); however, rural residents being denied of all of those things.